Manual for Students

REFERENCES

1.Bell A. Language Style as Audience Design / Allan Bell. – Language in Society. – No. 13 (2). – 1984. – P. 145 – 204.

2.Bell A. Language Style as Audience Design / Allan Bell // Sociolinguistics: A Reader. – New York : St. Martin’s Press, 1997. – P. 240 – 250.

3.Chambers J. K. Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and its Social Significance / Jack K. Chambers. – Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1995. – P. 5.

4.Crystal D. Linguistics / David Crystal. – London : Penguin Books, 1971. – P. 158 – 166.

5.Dictionary in Linguistics and Phonetics / Ed. by David Crystal. – London : Blackwell Publishing, 1997. – 479 p.

6.Eckert P. Style and Sociolinguistic Variation / Penelope Eckert, John R. Rickford. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2001. – P. 11.

7.Gee J. Social Linguistics and Literacies / James Gee. – New York : Falmer Press, 1996. – 301 p.

8.Halliday M. A. K. The Users and the Uses of Language / Mac A. K. Halliday, Alister McIntosh, Peter Strevens // Readings in the Sociology of Language. – The Hague, Paris : Mouton, 1970. – P. 14.

9.LabovW. Sociolinguistic Patterns / William Labov. – Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972. – 432 p.

10.Labov W. Field Methods of the Project in Linguistic Change and Variation / William Labov // Language in Use. – London : PrenticeHall, 1984. – P. 216 – 231.

11.Milroy J. Linguistic Variation and Change / James Milroy. – Oxford : Blackwell Publishing, 1980. – 198 p.

12.Moerman M. Ethnic Identification in a Complex Civilization: Who Are the Lue? / Michael Moerman // American Anthropologist. – Vol. 67. – 1965. – P. 1215 – 1230.

13.Patrick P. L. Style and Register in Jamaican Patwa / Peter L. Patrick // Englishes Around the World: Studies in Honour of Manfred Goerlach. – Vol. 2 : Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Australasia. – Amsterdam : John Benjamins, 1997. – P. 41 – 56.

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14.Preston D. R. Sorting out the Variables in Sociolinguistic Theory / Dennis R. Preston // American Speech. – 1991. – No. 66 (1). – P. 33 – 56.

15.Rickford J. R. Addressee and Topic-Influenced Style Shift: A Quantitative Sociolinguistic Study / John R. Rickford, Faye McNairKnox. – Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1994. – 207 p.

16.Romaine S. Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics / Suzanne Romaine. – Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1994. – P. 67 – 70, 72 – 125.

17.Sociolinguistics. A Resource Book for Students / Ed. by Peter Stockwell. – London, NY : Routledge, 2002. – 345 p.

18.Trudgill P. The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich / Peter Trudgill. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1974. – 405 p.

19.Trudgill P. Sociolinguistics: An Introduction / Peter Trudgill. – Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1974. – 398 p.

20.Williams R. Culture and Society / Raymond Williams. – London : The Hogarth Press, 1958. – P. 119.

21.WolframW.American English / Walt Wolfram, Natalie SchillingEstes. – Oxford : Blackwell Publishing, 1998. – P. 46 – 214.

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-7-

LANGUAGE CONTACT

AND LINGUISTIC CONVERGENCE

Overview

The chapter is aimed at clarifying the connection between contactinduced structural language changes in cases of language maintenance and linguistic convergence. The later is viewed as a process which leads to greater structural similarity between the languages involved in the process. Thus in the following sections various instances of structural convergence will be explored as well as structural factors which brought about the diffusion of linguistic features.

Topics covered include: Sprachbund; Linguistic Convergence; Substratum, Superstratum, Adstratum; Language Contact and Phonological Change; Suprasegmental System of Language (on the base of Estonian).

Key words: Sprachbund, Language Convergence Area, Genetic Heterogeneity, Typological Homogeneity, Structural / Linguistic Convergence.

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7.1 Sprachbund: Contact Across Contiguous

Speech Communities

The observation has frequently been made in different parts of the world that some languages spoken in the same geographical area share typological features, even though they may be related only remotely or not at all. This kind of sеtting leading to structural diffusion is characterized as prоlоngеd соntact across geographically contiguous lаnguаgе communities [1, p. 11]. The groups involved may develop close links and patterns of interaction for purposes of trade, or because of cultural practices such as exogamy, or because they are subsumed through conquest within a larger political conglomerate. Anyway, the languages they speak are said to constitute a Sprachbund, a language convergence area and the languages spoken within that area, in which genetic

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heterogeneity is gradually replaced by typological homogeneity. The German term Sprachbund was coined by Trubetzkoy [20], who apparently saw it as a counterpart to the notion of language family. It has been translated roughly as language association, language league, union of languages. Other terms that have been used include convergence area, diffusion area. But the term Sprachbund is now the generally accepted choice.

The concept itself was elaborated in an influential article by Jakobson [12; 13], in which he described phonological linguistic alliances in eastern Asia, northern Europe, and the wide territory comprising eastern Europe and western Asia that he referred to as Eurasia. Later Jakobson added the important notion of linguistic affinity, claiming that under conditions of language contact only those elements of structure are accepted by a language from another language that correspond to its own tendencies of development.

Linguistic convergence in a Sprachbund presupposes a situation in which speakers of different languages live in close proximity for centuries and maintain their own language for communication with members of their own group yet also frequently have to communicate with speakers of other languages who reside in the same geographical area [6, p. 158; 7, p. 91]. Before discussing some typical cases, let us consider two kinds of situations in which language shift rather than language maintenance is the result.

One way in which languages can come into contact is the arrival of a substantial group of newcomers to a formerly linguistically homogeneous territory. One possible outcome is that both groups continue to speak their own language: this may ultimately lead to a linguistic alliance – Sprachbund. The newcomers may be assimilated into the indigenous population and assume their language, or the newcomers’ language may prevail and the original inhabitants may adopt it. Which outcome emerges as a result of the contact situation depends on a large number of extralinguistic factors such as the size of the respective groups, their level of material and nonmaterial culture and their military strength [5, p. 43]. Usually a period of widespread bilingualism precedes the language shift.

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7.2 Substratum, Superstratum, Adstratum

When the original inhabitants adopt the language of the newcomers, we may assume that during the period of bilingualism they speak the new language with a certain degree of interference from their primary language. If after the shift these elements from the primary language are transmitted to later generations of speakers of the prevailing language, they constitute the substratum of that language [9, p. 75]. Typically, the substratum affects the phonology of the adopted language, but other kinds of interference may likewise be found; in general the effects of a substratum are comparable to the influence of a bilingual speaker’s mother tongue on his secondary language.

When the newcomers are linguistically absorbed into the indigenous population, the influence of their language, the superstratum, is comparable to the influence of a bilingual’s secondary language upon his primary language. Superstratum influences are usually found in the lexicon, but they may affect other aspects of the language as well [10, p. 3].

In the literature the terms substratum and superstratum are frequently applied to languages occupying the Low and High ends of the prestige scale in multilingual diglossia [2; 8; 11]. This is understandable, since in many cases the newcomers have been military conquerors and therefore have been in a dominant position, whereas the conquered indigenous populations have been in a subordinate position. In the present discussion the terms will be used to refer to language contact situations in which a language shift has taken place without implications of inferiority or superiority. The choice of the term is simply determined by the direction of the shift. If the indigenous population speaks language A and the newcomers speak language B, and if speakers of A shift to B, then A constitutes the substratum of B. If, on the other hand, speakers of B shift to A, then B constitutes the superstratum for A.

In a Sprachbund situation the languages entering into the linguistic alliance are said to stand in adstratum relationship to each other. Adstratum presupposes language maintenance for a substantial period of time [5, p. 18].

A widely studied language convergence area is found on the Balkan peninsula. The languages participating in the Balkan Sprachbund belong

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to several more or less closely related families. Three Slavic languages are members of the Sprachbund: Bulgarian, Macedonian and the southeastern dialects of Serbocroatian. The other main languages of the Sprachbund are likewise Indo-European: Albanian, Modern Greek, Romanian. Historically, the now extinct Indo-European languages Illyrian and Thracian as well as Latin and Ancient Greek may be assumed to have played a role. Later the non-Indo-European languages of several waves of conquering invaders – Avars, Bulgars, Hungarians, Turks – entered into the picture [22]. The complex history of the Balkans has seen developments in which the language of one set of invaders constitutes the dominant language until the other invasion, when it becomes the subordinate language, ultimately emerging victorious when the invaders have been absorbed. Substratum, superstratum and adstratum inlluences have to be taken into consideration in attempting to explain the causes of Balkan linguistic convergence.

7.3 Balkanisms as an Example of Language Convergence

(Balkan Sprachbund)

The Balkan Sprachbund is perhaps the best-known and most widely researched convergence situation in the field of areal linguistics, its study dating back to the XIX century. The primary languages of the Sprachbund includeAlbanian, Greek, Romanian (a Romance language), and the Slaviс languages Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian. Other languages more marginally involved include Judezmo (also known as Ladino or Judeo-Espagnol), Romany and Turkish.

The sociohistorical background to this situation involved prolonged contact among the above language groups during the period from AD 800 to 1700. Contact was due to a variety of causes, including war and conquest, trade, animal herding, etc. Invasions by different groups (Southern Slavs, Bulgars, etc.) led to a long period of migration across language boundaries, leading to the emergence of multilingual communities. One important factor in the areal diffusion of linguistic features appears to have been the widespread use of Greek as a High language across these communities. This was related to the spread of Byzantine civilization and in particular the unifying role played by the Greek Orthodox church.

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Hence Greek seems to have been the source of, or the vehicle for, many of the diffused features. However, Greek was also the recipient in some cases, so the picture is not that clear [3].

The full details of this contact situation are still unknown. However, the linguistic consequences can be seen in various types of convergence at all linguistic levels. In phonology the Balkan languages share the absence of suprasegmental features such as length and nasalization in vowel articulation, as well as the presence of a mid-to-high central vowel /i/ or // (not present in Greek or Standard Macedonian, though it occurs in some Macedonian dialects). Scholars also pointed out that the vowels systems of the languages had merged to some extent, all having at least the vowels i, e, a, o, u [22].

The structural features shared by the majority of contemporary Balkan languages (Balkanisms) include the following:

1)Decay of Nominal and Pronominal Inflection. All six of the main languages of the Balkan Sprachbund have experienced a reduction of the case system. Usually a construction with a preposition is employed instead. The following examples are from Bulgarian, in which the decay of the nominal inflection has gone farthest. In these examples the preposition na, originally with locative meaning, is used to introduce nominal attributes, indirect objects, and direct objects.

Attribute: knigata na bašta mi ‘my father’s book’ Indirect object: toj kaza na majka ‘he says to the mother’

Direct object: palento na ogъn zabraneno ‘lighting fire is forbidden’

Locative: na koja ulica živeete ‘on which street do you live’.

2)Pleonastic Use of Personal Pronouns. This feature is likewise found in all six of the main Balkan languages. A Modern Greek example would be emena me fainetai ‘it seems to me’; compare Macedonian jas nego go poznavam ‘I know him’ (literally, ‘I him him know’), Albanian mua mё kunё sjellё kёtu ‘they brought me here’.

3)Loss of the Infinitive and Its Replacement by a Personal Construction. This is again one of the common features. Compare Bulgarian daj mi da pija ‘give me to drink’ (literally, ‘give me that I drink’), Modern Greek dos mou na pio ‘give me to drink’, Albanian a-mё tё pi ‘give me to drink’.

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4) Use of Postpositive Arlicle. This feature is shared by five of the six languages (the Modern Greek article precedes its noun). It should be noted that each language has used linguistic material present in the language itself for the development of the postpositive article: we are dealing not with the borrowing of morphemes but with the spread of a pattern. Compare Romanian elev, elevul ‘pupil, the pupil’, floare, floarea ‘flower, the flower’; Macedonian zgrada, zgradata ‘building, the building’, utro, utroto ‘morning, the morning’ [3, p. 123].

A number of additional Balkanisms are shared by different subsets of the six main Balkan languages. For example, the analytic formation of comparatives is shared by the Šopluk dialects of Serbocroatian, Bulgarian, and Modern Greek: ‘pretty’ and ‘prettier’ appear as ubav – po-ubav in the Šopluk dialects, as xubav – poxubav in Bulgarian, and as kalos – pio kalos in Modern Greek. The numbers 11 through 19 are formed with the translation equivalents of ‘one on ten’ in the three Slavic languages, in Romanian, and Albanian: compare jedanaest (*jedan + na + deset) in Serbocroatian, unsprezece (un + spre + zece) in Romanian, and njёmbёdhjetё (njё + mbё + dhjetё) in Albanian for ‘eleven’ [ibid., p. 124].

In addition, the core Balkan languages share many phonological features, such as reduction of unstressed vowels (especially in southeastern Serbocroatian dialects, Macedonian, and Bulgarian): loss of tone and quantity and development of an expiratory accent (particularly noticeable in southeastern Serbocroatian dialects as compared to the standard language and those dialects that are not part of the Sprachbund); development of a central vowel (Bulgarian anu Romanian); and development of a special intonation pattern for yes-no questions (Serbocroatian, Romanian, and Albanian). There is also a large collection of shared vocabulary, particularly loanwords from Greek and Turkish, and shared loan translations. The impression of similarity is enhanced by an abundance of habitual sayings, phrases, and idioms that follow the same pattern; for example, ‘at a good time’ appears in Serbocroatian as u dobri čas, in Bulgarian as dobъr čas, in Greek as hora kale, in Romanian as ceas bun, and in Albanian as orё e mbarё [3, p. 124].

Albanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Romanian share the largest number of Balkanisms. Modern Greek and Serbocroatian lack several

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of the features characteristic of the Balkan Sprachbund; in Serbocroatian frequently only the Torlak and Šopluk dialects appear to be involved in the linguistic alliance.

In trying to establish the causes of the observed linguistic convergence, scholars have attempted to identify one of the languages spoken in the Balkans as the source of the Balkanisms. Substratum and superstratum languages are fairly well known, with the exception of some of the ancient Indo-European languages (Thracian, lilyrian) spoken in Ihe interior of Ihe peninsula while Greek and Latin spread outward from the cities and along the coast. There exists, however, no single language that contains all the features characteristic of the Balkan Sprachbund; attempts to explain them on the basis of a particular substratum or superstratum have been unsuccessful.

The adstratum theoryis relativelymore plausible. Bythe fourth century A.D. Latin was spoken extensively in the northern half of the peninsula, and Greek was spoken in the southern half; both languages continued to be spoken and were available as adstratum. The invasions of the ancestors of southern Slavs in the fifth and sixth centuries created the preconditions for the development of linguistic convergence [ibid., p. 125].

The appearance of the various Balkanisms in the Balkan languages can be followed in written records that were continuous in Greek and began at a relatively early date in Bulgarian. Greek provides the earliest examples: the avoidance of the infinitive is already attested in New Testament Greek, and the analytical comparison of adjectives can be found in eighthand ninth-century manuscripts. This feature is found in Bulgarian in the twelfth century. The merger of the dative and genitive appears in Greek in the tenth century: the use of prepositions to indicate syntactic relationships seems to have begun in Bulgarian in Ihe twelfth eentmy. Greek had always had a delinite article; Bulgarian begins to show the development of the article in the eleventh century, and its use becomes regular in the seventeenth century. Because of the lack of written records, Balkanisms cannot be dated any earlier than the XVI centuries in Alhanian and Romanian. The Balkan Sprachbund appears to have been established by the XVII century [18].

Even the adstratum theory cannot fully explain the shared features of the Balkan Sprachbund, and for the same reason that the superstratum

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and substratum theories were found wanting: there exists no Ianguage that contains all the features that characterize the Sprachbund. Civ’jan [4] has suggested that the Balkanisms can be explained not by reconstructing an earlier stage but by constructing a future stage in the development of the Balkan languages. To represent this future stage toward which the Balkan languages are converging, Civ’jan sets up a syntactic model for sentences in the various languages. The sentence model consists of the same syntactic slots for all languages; the syntactic slots may be filled by lexical items drawn from any one of the languages constituting the Sprachbund. According to this theory, the defining characteristics of the Balkan Sprachbund are similarities in syntax.

7.4 Language Contact and Phonological Change

The southern and southeastern shores of the Baltic are (or have been previously) the home of Baltic peoples, whose languages preserve the Indo-European polytonicity, albeit in modified form. The German and Polish speakers of that territory have not developed tone; however, there is some evidence that language contact has influenced Polish sentence intonation in the variety of Polish that is in contact with Lithuanian [16].

The prosodic system of Lithuanian appears not to have been essentially modified as a result of its contacts with neighboring languages. The Latvian system, on the other hand, shows considerable influence from Finno-Ugric languages spoken in the same territory and to the north of the area in which Latvian is presently spoken [23].

The prosodic system of Latvian differs from that of Lithuanian in two basic respects: in contrast to the free accent of Lithuanian, accent in Latvian is fixed on the first syllable, and Latvian has developed a third tone in additiontothe twoinheritedtonesthat it shareswithLithuanian. It isgenerally accepted that these two differences from Lithuanian are due to contact with Livonian, a Finno-Ugric language with stress on the first syllable.

The Latvian third tone, manifested as a glottal modification, is phonetically very similar to the Danish stød. It arose in Latvian in connection with the retraction of word stress to a first syllable that carried an original acute accent (the term is used to refer to the pitch pattern that appears in Lithuanian as a long falling tone and in Latvian as a long even

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